


just at the split of your lips

by Plooby



Series: and as we fall we sing [5]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: "is that girl golem a murder boy too?", Anal Sex, M/M, Semi-Public Sex, Taerahel Surana, Taerahel and His Murder Boys, imagination adventures about dragon age ocs, sten and shale just like pulling out a pack of cards eventually, yes 🖕
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:20:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25090756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plooby/pseuds/Plooby
Summary: Taerahel is very impressed by Zevran's killing blow on a high dragon. (To be fair, it was pretty impressive.)
Relationships: Zevran Arainai/Male Surana
Series: and as we fall we sing [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1790470
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	just at the split of your lips

Blood was still gouting over his hands when the column of scaled flesh started to sway out from under him. The fall was vertiginous, and Zevran struck the ground again hard enough to rattle his teeth and bones all together, scarcely cushioned by the snow. Before he could even pull the breath back into his flattened lungs, though, Taerahel was running over to him, clumsily amid the obstacles of robes, cloak, snow, and rock. He dropped to his knees in front of where Zevran was struggling his way upright, too intent in his focus for it to be possible to laugh away.

"Are you all right? Are you hurt?" Taerahel didn't wait for an answer before his critical eye caught the claw-marks that had tattered the leather and scored into Zevran's upper arm, and he brought the staff he was still clutching across his knees to aid in healing them. Zevran might have protested the lack of necessity, but he also didn't delude himself it would be of the slightest use in changing Taerahel's mind. And they did hurt.

After only a few seconds they were closed, though, and hurt no longer. Taerahel released his concentration and took a breath, and made as if to start looking Zevran over again, but this time Zevran felt compelled to intervene.

"The rest is only bruises, I assure you," he said, and grinned back at Taerahel's sharp look to cover the last of his breathlessness. "And fine souvenirs they will make. Now there is something we do not do every day!"

"A worthy battle," Sten agreed, from where he stood a few paces back. He looked more winded himself than Zevran had ever seen him, but was still taking reverent care in tending to that enormous sword Taerahel had helped him find. Personally Zevran found it a bit idolatrous to pay more heed to the weapon than to the cut it made, but who was he to judge? He'd been known to treat worse things than swords much more scandalously, in his time.

Taerahel was still eyeing Zevran for the moment, but at last Sten's voice drew him climbing to his feet again, to go to him next. His figure, small even as elves went, was dwarfed enough by Sten's to be comical, but neither of them had ever seemed to let that affect them. "Were you wounded, Sten?" Taerahel asked, seriously, his gaze turned up to Sten's. Sten paused a moment in finally stowing his sword away again to meet it.

"No," Sten said, in a tone to match. "I'm prepared to fight again, if need be."

Taerahel smiled slightly, and nodded. "Good. Well done, then."

That managed to bring a slight answering smile even to Sten's lips, something that never failed to mildly impress Zevran to see. He had long observed that there was some depth of connection between those two that did not seem to be his to understand, but he was content to let it be. It was enough for him to know that there seemed to be no chance of the giant's being competition for Taerahel's bedroll -- particularly since, purely from a logistical perspective, that notion edged past "intriguing" into "cause for serious concern."

"I seem to have foregone the greater portion of my arm, not that anyone asked," Shale said from just behind Sten as Zevran was at last staggering to his feet, and they all regrouped as Taerahel was seeing to that problem as best he could. By the time Shale was largely repaired, the bitterness of the wind on the summit was fast overcoming the warmth of their exertions, and Taerahel herded them quickly into the nearer tunnel that led straight toward the temple. From above, Shale was able to clear the collapsed rock and snow quite handily, and they found themselves deposited back in one of the side passages, too narrow for them to navigate except one-by-one. Following just behind Taerahel, though, Zevran could see that his breath was still fast and his color much ruddier than its ordinary long-cloistered pallor, and unseen he could allow himself a frown. Had the close call affected him more than he let on?

But then they had reached the central chamber, just below the level where the fire pit still burned in their wake, and descended the stairs to the littered corpses of cultists on the main floor. And there Taerahel stopped, turning on his heel back to the rest of them with the most charming of his many very charming looks.

"I'm sorry, but Shale, Sten, could you wait here a bit? Make sure nothing untoward's befallen Genitivi, if you can. I just need a moment with Zevran."

Zevran had only time to raise half an eyebrow and turn half a look his way. Before he could manage more, Taerahel had already caught hold of his arm and begun drawing it along with him as he headed for the lower passage, apparently interested in leaving no time for discussion. Sten was standing back to wait without question, though, of course, and Zevran supposed it wouldn't do to be less agreeable himself.

They were already a few steps away by the time Shale sighed and said, in no attempt at a lowered voice, "Ah, wonderful. Now it wishes us to dawdle in a frozen ruin while it fornicates with the painted elf."

"Keep each other company!" Taerahel called back over his shoulder with all good cheer, and absolutely no evidence of stopping. Nor, Zevran was quite aware, did he seem either offended or abashed in the slightest -- or interested in denying the accusation, for that matter.

So why not let himself be tugged down the twisting hall at half a run, and pushed ahead into the crumbling library at its end? Particularly not when Taerahel had no sooner thrown the door shut behind him than swarmed into Zevran's arms, kissing him in a hungry collision, all hot breath and teeth.

"That was incredible," Taerahel said fervently almost into his lips, when he could seem to bear to let go an inch of space, both his hands clutching at Zevran's head and holding their faces near. "You're incredible. Up on its neck like that, the _size_ of that thing, and cutting it open -- you don't know how you _looked_ , I couldn't look at anything but you -- " He interrupted himself with a a thin faint sound as his whole body arched against Zevran's, a definite stiffness grinding against his upper thigh beyond layers of leather and robe. " _Fuck._ I can't wait. I want you so much."

"I see that I am definitely going to need to slay more dragons," Zevran said, leaning in mid-way through to set his curved moving lips at the base of Taerahel's throat. His arms were already wrapped tight around Taerahel's waist, and Taerahel leaned back on them, laughing breathlessly, to bare more skin to Zevran's mouth.

"You do need a new career." He let Zevran linger a moment longer before seeking out another kiss, and drew them both backward by their arms around each other, to the table heaped with dusty books nearby. At least the embers of the fire a few of the cultists had left burning on the floor made it more pleasant in here than it might have been, cutting through the frigid air. "Right now, though," Taerahel said, slipping back from the kiss again as he gripped the table's edge and leaned back on it, "I just want you to show me what it's like to have something as strong as a dragon between your legs."

There was something very satisfying, it turned out, in having created a monster. Zevran couldn't help laughing as he pushed in over Taerahel over the table, claiming both his body and mouth, but fortunately it didn't seem he'd offended; Taerahel's lips only curved in answer against Zevran's, where they parted to permit and meet his tongue.

They kept that up only moments longer before Taerahel broke away yet again, this time to glance about himself in irritation and then sweep an arm backward to knock all the books and scrolls on the table tumbling to the floor. Another sign of progress on his part, in Zevran's opinion. He leaned on the table to kick away his boots, and then pushed upright again to hike his robes and shove away the leggings and smalls beneath, before clambering up on the table with the fabric clutched up around his waist and his legs spread around Zevran's hips. Breathing fast and flushed and mussed with his eyes burning on Zevran's, dressed down to his waist and then bared from stiff prick down past his slim pale thighs, he was quite the sight to behold, and Zevran wasted no time unfastening his own breeches and shoving them down his thighs, holding the skirting of his chestpiece out of the way. He leaned in over Taerahel and Taerahel lay back on his propping elbows to match, pushing his legs up around Zevran's hips, and then tipped his head back moaning and rolled his hips when Zevran ran a teasing palm along his shaft.

"Fuck me," Taerahel said, in a tight urgent voice, although it broke open a second later on a breath of laugh. "For -- one thing, I don't know how long Sten and Shale can talk about how useless humans are without getting bored."

"I would not be concerned," Zevran said, grinning, but he dug into his hip pouches all the same. They had traveled lightly to the temple, but it was very well that no one with as much care for good leather as he had went anywhere without oil.

He stroked himself slick and fully hard while Taerahel watched greedily, and then guided his cock inside him, with Taerahel's legs lifted high and clasping around his back. The slick grip of muscle fluttered and then settled around him, a hot squeezing caress as he pushed himself in that was equaled in satisfaction by the gasps of wordless sound Taerahel made on every breath. He held himself still as Zevran slid into him, his eyes bare slits of brilliant green and every lovely, angular line of his face inscribed with desire and pleasure. Of all the men he'd fucked, Zevran could not be sure he'd ever known one to love the act so dearly, and his enthusiasm was infectious, making it a new delight every time to drive into him what he craved. He was a fascinating tangle of contradictions in so many ways: at once haughty and pragmatic, calculating and naive, ruthless and humane, and enamored of power while quick to defend the powerless -- or to enjoy letting power slip his hands. It was impossible not to be drawn in, compelled by wondering what was hidden on the next layer down, every time it seemed Zevran had struck the bottom.

It did not escape his notice that there was cause for concern in that.

Still, he had no time for it now, buried to his hilt while Taerahel had begun to writhe and roll up against him, encouraging him to thrust. He braced his hands on the table, bracketing Taerahel's sides with his arms, as he drew his hips back slightly and drove them in again. Taerahel pushed eagerly back against his cock, letting his own elbows slide away from under him in the process to rest down on his back on the table, and then fumbled his hands up under his own thighs to clutch and draw at Zevran's, a second later. Zevran rocked into him again one more slow time, relishing the bloom of heat and slick tightness, and Taerahel gasped and let out a low sound and bit his lip, squirming again to get him deeper. Pinkness had spread in uneven blossoms all down his face and throat and chest, staining him with his pleasure.

"Fuck," Taerahel muttered, twisting his head to thrash away the hair already sweat-sticking to his cheek in spite of the icy air. " _Yes,_ yes, that's -- " His hand stole to his cock as though with its own mind, stroking and pumping himself a few slow times, before he pulled it back away and curled it into a tight fist beside his hip, as though fighting all temptation. His eyes cracked open again, fixed on Zevran from under their heavy lids as he met another crest of Zevran's hips. "It's too good -- you always make me come too fast."

"You could think of something suitably pious," Zevran said, grinning, punctuating it with a growing rhythm of steady, deliberate thrusts -- Taerahel continuing to rock with him all the while, pulling himself along with his clinging hands and legs. When that made Taerahel's chest shake with one soundless laugh, he added, panting a bit himself, "You do know this is -- at _least_ the third most inappropriate place I've done this."

That made Taerahel _really_ laugh, in full voice, his eyes squeezing briefly shut and nose wrinkling at his brow. He really did have a terribly adorable smile, which surely brought him no end of frustration. "Not bad," he managed, in spite of barely getting the breath, and grinned back at Zevran when he looked up at him again. "I'll have to -- see if I can climb the rankings." His hand, sweating, slipped on Zevran's hip, and he clutched again as he caught his breath. "Could've fucked in the actual Urn chamber -- "

"Next time, perhaps," Zevran promised him, and this time his laugh was too out of breath to hear.

They drove together deliciously on a steady pulse, slid apart slightly in between with a drag of slick skin on skin that was endlessly exquisite. The quiet wet sound of their joined movement was a steady undercurrent, mingling with the heaviness of their breath. Taerahel's clenched hand squeezed and relaxed at his side, then opened to rub restlessly at his hip and thigh, the hungry tics of a forebearing addict. His prick, now left untouched, had leaked a small pooling trail of pre-come on his belly, looking iron-hard and desperate where it bobbed gently with every thrust.

It was surely what drove the working of his hips against Zevran to become faster and more erratic before long, pulling impatiently against their steadiness. A moment later he groaned between closed teeth, and rolled his head restlessly, fixing Zevran with another stare with his head angled on one side and mussed hair straying into his eyes. "More," he whispered, his lips trembling slightly around the shape of the word. "Harder, please. Do me harder."

There was no way to refuse such an invitation, even if Zevran had in the slightest wanted to. His lips curved around his heavy breath, and he shifted his weight onto one hand, curling the other under Taerahel's hips and securing them up against him. The firmer hold made Taerahel gasp again, and made it easier to drive into him much faster, harder like he'd begged -- and then he was moaning out loud, his fingers clenching below Zevran's hips with a satisfyingly bruising ferocity. He flexed his legs around Zevran's back to grip it tighter, and braced one hand back on the tabletop for leverage, to work against Zevran with as much force as he was given, fucking back as much as he was being fucked. An arching, twisting, overworked mess of the poised and beautiful man who led them, undone with wanting Zevran's cock as deep in him as it would go --

Zevran leaned in tighter over him, pressing his body closer to Taerahel's, holding Taerahel's hips under him as he worked. The angle was harder on his back nearly to the point of being painful, which to his mind was a benefit -- a discomfort to distract him away from the incredible sight under him and squeezing around his prick. He would not bring this to an end before Taerahel had all he wanted from it.

It seemed, though, like Taerahel's own ability to hold himself back was on the verge of being overtaxed. The flush in his face was building rapidly to a nearly alarming color, his mouth working around sounds that failed to find any voice to support them as often as not, his features taut with a pleasure that was only building without release to the edge of pain. Finally he opened his eyes again to stare up at Zevran with such ferocity as though to devour him -- and his head arched back on a small cracking cry, as he relented and seized his cock in his hand. Zevran would have taken the task from him at once if he'd had a single hand free -- greedy, suddenly, to be the cause of every inch of the pleasure carved deep into Taerahel's face, to let him do absolutely nothing for himself that Zevran did not provide for him -- but instead he settled for just trying to press even closer still, to where he could feel the motions of Taerahel's hand bumping into the lower part of his leather breastplate and the skin bared beneath.

The end was an inevitability from there, however they might both have strained to hold it back. The working of Taerahel's hand was erratic but frantic, slowing every few seconds but always speeding again almost at once. He drove his hips against Zevran's in a merciless pistoning all the while, probably responsible for more of their momentum now than Zevran was himself. He was lovely and wild, all of him in constant motion, swaying visibly on the edge of giving in to coming. His throat worked and chest heaved and the whole line of him bent and flexed like a fired bowstring. The heat of him surrounded Zevran, never still on him, drawing him to the point of all endurance and beyond.

Then his breath was deepening and hand tightening, and one especially hard thrust seemed to shake a small shocked cry out of his lips. His limbs jumped and twitched with the force of what was taking him, and he tautened and tightened all through his last few grinds into Zevran's cock... and then he was at his crest, peaked, rigid and trembling and shouting in full voice as climax tore through him, coming an impressive amount up his own belly and chest in his bent-double position. The shudders seemed to wrack him endlessly, even as Zevran's hips kept up the fastest pace they could with mindless intensity, pulled along without thought by the sight of him and the feel of him and how close he was himself, how unsurvivably close.

It was too much to stand, and in seconds he was coming as well, just barely and by sheer force of will not before Taerahel's wracking shudders had begun to ease. The warmth around him flared into heat all through him, cutting through his whole body, his mind, severing him from everything in one explosive stroke. A thick sound might have torn out of him as well, his hips shuddering still where they had snapped one last time to their greatest depth, and then everything was gone, obliterated like the tunnel that had fallen in with snow.

He was leaning heavily on both hands on the table when he could seem to make sense of his body again, Taerahel lying between them limp and tumbled and gasping for breath. His legs had sagged from wrapping around Zevran's back to sprawl half-propped on the table's edge around his hips, keeping space for him at the center. The cold in the air was, for the moment, actually almost pleasant.

After a long moment's recovery Zevran was able to fumble down to take hold of himself, and draw slowly and carefully out of Taerahel. He was aware of Taerahel wincing slightly anyway, but that could not have been avoided, he imagined; not in the devastated aftermath of a fuck like that. Once his cock was free, he made half an attempt to push himself upright, but overbalanced forward and just wound up bent over Taerahel and resting against him, weight partly propped on his elbows. His head was near enough Taerahel's chest to hear the waning thunder of his heart. And it only seemed sensible to stay like that for a moment, breathing and close, with Taerahel still and spent beneath him.

He had managed to set aside what he had not let the Guardian finish asking, when they had first arrived at the summit, about whether he regretted what he had done. He had long practice setting aside what could not be borne, after all. But on some level, it had lingered, all this while. The thorn of it at the back of his mind had simply caught on it now and again all the way through the gauntlet of trials, and dragged as he moved forward.

Taerahel had wanted to fuck him after watching him cut a dragon's throat instead of a man's, but before that, he had run full-tilt to Zevran over the rocks and snow when there was any chance he might be hurt. There was a particular smile that Zevran could cause to appear on Taerahel's mouth that no one else seemed able to summon, and that was an honor he could not see how he had earned -- a thought that at first had pleased him, and had then begun increasingly to make him uneasy as well. So, too, how Taerahel had offered his virginity fresh from a life spent to date literally locked in a tower, and then slept with every sign of contentment inside his arms after. It was... disturbing, to be gifted with such trust. It was more disturbing still to be moved by it, to find that there was pleasure in a smile that belonged only to him that was still greater than any of the ordinary ones he'd always taken where he could find them. None of it seemed appropriate for a person with the life he had behind him, and still no real idea of the one that might lie before. Someone who had made such regrets, who might very well make more. And he was perhaps most disquieted to realize how profoundly it dismayed him to think such things, and how he was in fact beginning to feel that he would prefer his own death to another such betrayal, if it were to come to that.

_You were supposed to kill me yourself,_ he thought, not without a touch of rueful amusement, with Taerahel's warmth pinned under him and heartbeat in his ears, Taerahel's breath just stirring his hair. _That would have been so very much simpler for both of us._

It would have, but... ah, well. The heavens laughed at plans, so they said, and it was what it was now. It was absurd to moan over what was meant to have been; he would do better to do what he had always done, and enjoy what he could get while it was his, and not concern himself with anything else. It would end how it ended, and if there was no way it could end well, then at least he had the satisfaction of knowing there was no one to blame but himself.

He stirred himself to push his weight up off of Taerahel's chest, and Taerahel gave him that selfsame smile he had been thinking of when he had raised up on his arms, before wrapping his hands around behind Zevran's head to press it to his mouth in a kiss. Zevran kissed back, and then clambered awkwardly backward to his feet, without letting it trouble him any further. Among his very many talents, pretending not to see what he saw whenever it was prudent had always rated highly..

Taerahel muttered a curse under his breath as Zevran was setting his own breeches back in order, and he glanced up to find Taerahel with his leg twisted around clumsily, cleaning himself up as best he could with a woefully inadequate scrap of rag. "Well, that's going to be unpleasant," he said with resignation as he finally pushed off the table and set about arranging his clothes again, although not without a bit of a grin in Zevran's direction. "I can't say I regret it, though. Maybe that horrible little town has a tub somewhere that _hasn't_ been used in a blood ritual."

"We live in hope," Zevran said with an answering smile, and an arm offered for Taerahel to steady himself on as he dressed. Some lies were harmless, after all... and there were times when that was the best that you could expect.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song "Four Words" by Parenthetical Girls.
> 
> Inspired by true gameplay events and my own riffing thereon, for the record.


End file.
